Granada: Day 2

cont...


The Cathedral: 
One of the main attractions in Granada is the Cathedral and we went to see it Friday morning.  The really interesting part of Granada is that the city was Moorish until 1492 when it was conquered by the Catholic Monarchs.  As a result, many of the Mosques were rebuilt into cathedrals.  Depressing that the mosques were destroyed, but I have to say the Cathedral was magnificent to behold.  Apparently, it took 180 years to complete, and it shows.  I don't know if you can tell from the pictures but it is just enormous and incredibly intricate.  I love the colors too, the white marble and the gold-work are stunning in person and in pictures as well.   

The Alhambra:
It has always been my dream to visit the Alhambra.  I had heard tales of its beauty since 8th grade in social studies and spanish classes, but I can now officially say that nothing compares to what it looks like in person.  The Alhambra was built as a palace for the sultan but also as military fortress.  And after walking up the hill to get to the structure, I could see why it would be so effective!  If the armies could even make it there that would be a win, but the fortress is impenetrable (at least to my untrained eye).  I believe that the reason the Alhambra is still in such good conditions is because the Christians who eventually conquered Granada loved it so much that they kept all of the initial architecture.  And thank god they did.  It is beautiful at every turn, and overwhelmingly huge in person.  I think once again it is best to let the pictures speak for themselves.  Some group shots I do not have yet (my camera tried to die on me in the middle of one of the palaces) but I will post them as soon as possible.  

I was so happy to be in the Alhambra palace!  Don't I fit right in?

Every little part of the palace is just stunningly beautiful.  

Wall decorations. So beautiful.

Looking natural in the most beautiful palace.  

Court of the Myrtles: patio's similar to this indicate the amount of wealth the palace and their family has.  To me it looks like they were pretty darn well-off!

This is where the famous Fountain of the Lions was supposed to be.  Unfortunately, it was under construction.  Still beautiful though!

Meghan and I overlooking all of Granada from a point on the citadel.

The communal baths.

Me, guarding the palace.

The Cathedral we saw in the morning, as seen from the Alhambra watch tower. 

View of Granada from the watchtower. 

In the Generalife gardens.

The Alhambra palaces from the gardens.

Such terrific views at every corner.

The whole group: Meghan, Anna, Aubrey, Kayla, Me

Exhaustedly playing cards in the hostel.

Granada: Day 1

I have successfully returned from my adventure in Southern Spain!  I just realized that not everyone may realize exactly what that journey entails so I included a map for your enjoyment.  I went all the way from point A to point B (a 13hr trip).

We boarded the bus at midnight (Weds night) in Oviedo and traveled down to Madrid (a major bus station) in order to transfer down to Granada.  We got into Madrid at 6:00am only to discover that we had to wait for two and a half hours for our next bus at 8:30am.  Needless to say we were feeling a little cranky, tired, cold, and hungry as we waited in the freezing bus station, but we made it onto our next bus with no problems.  With intermittent sleep we eventually arrived in Granada at 1pm on Thursday exhausted and ready to find our hostel.  First we met up with Meghan (my friend from high school) at the bus station (she had traveled from Sevilla) and set off, directions in hand, to locate our cheap yet hopefully lovely hostel.

The thing about traveling around a strange city in a group of 5 girls who are utterly spent and just want to get into bed is that it can very easily take a turn for the worst.  It started when our directions were horribly written.  We got off at what we thought was the right bus stop, and ended up wandering around Granada for TWO HOURS trying to find "Hostal AB."  Finally, we stumbled upon it and just about collapsed with joy and exhaustion.

The hostel was pretty nice I must say.  We were only paying $15 a night and had comfortable clean rooms with a private bathroom (and free wifi).  It would be hard to ask for much more!  The people were very nice and spoke both English and Spanish and accommodated us with anything we needed.  Initially our two rooms were separated but they rearranged it so that we could all be right next to each other, an effort that did not go unappreciated.

After a quick rest, we set out to explore the city.  Since the day was more than half over, we had decided to save the Alhambra for Friday in order to fully enjoy it.  So, with our hostel map in hand, we headed in the direction of the Monastery of San Jeronimo, observing the city as we went.  I am actually very impressed that we pushed through.  Another group may have been too tired to function, but since we had so few days to enjoy the city, we rallied and saw as much as we could.

The monastery was very picturesque.  Only Meghan, Anna, and I decided to go all the way inside but I was very glad that we did.  My theory for travelling is that you need to take advantage of as many opportunities as possible, even if it means spending a couple euros to enter a beautifully simple monastery.  Although clearly a tourist destination, the monastery is still functioning and we were able to see some brothers wandering about the halls.

But instead of describing the look of it I will show you:

Me, Meghan, and Anna

After the Monastery we wandered around a bit more, until we found the Arabic Market.  Originally we were using it just as a place to kill time, but we discovered a wealth of interesting and unique souvenirs and gifts.  Eventually we got too cold and wandered into a great little cafe for some tea and cafe con leche.

We then met up with some other friends from the Oviedo program to try out some Tapas.  In Spain, but especially Granada, if you order a drink of any kind you are served a free tapa, or snack, with the drink.  So, instead of having dinner thursday or friday night, we hopped from tapas bar to tapas bar trying all of the different food options.  It is a very cheap way to taste all of the different kinds of food.  For example, we had calamari, roast beef sandwiches, croquetas (which are like little balls of mashed potatoes with a fried shell), chicken wraps, and I am sure I am forgetting what else.  It is a very relaxing way to taste a lot of different kinds of food and was quite tasty and enjoyable.

We called an early night because the next day we got to explore the Alhambra...

Itinerary for my trip to GRANADA!!!

Thank you all for making such kinds comments!  Even though I do not respond to many of them, I do always read and appreciate them; they make me smile :)

Just a quick update for today, to alert y'all to my itinerary for my trip to Granada this "weekend."  We have Thursday off from classes and all the foreigners are skipping Friday (unspoken rule) so that we can travel farther distances.  So my friends and I are leaving tonight at 12:30am (so technically Thursday morning) and travelling through the night by bus, arriving in Granada at 1:50pm on Thursday.

We are then meeting up with my friend Meghan (from high school) and checking into our hostel: Hostal AB.  Aubrey, Meghan, and I are staying in one room and two of Aubrey's friends are staying in the same hostel but a different room.

Then we are spending the whole day on Friday at the Alhambra.  And other than that our plans are all up in the air!  Which is great!  We have information on doing a multitude of things so we have tons of options.

Then we are returning Saturday night at 6pm on a bus and getting back early Sunday morning (1ish?)  It is going to be an exhausting whirlwind trip, but should be really amazing if it all works out!

So that is the scoop folks!  I will be incommunicado for a couple of days, have a great weekend!

A story of perseverance and raw plumbing talent.

(A quick note: this story may be boring, but there will be a fun reward at the end! I promise!!)

There are times in life when you are faced with big, important issues that are completely unmanageable and make you want to curl in a ball and cry.  This was NOT one of those times.  However, in the heat of the moment it certainly felt like one of them.  I had recently been noticing that a lot of things were going down my kitchen sink that should not have been, but the water was still running fine so I thought little more about it.

Yet today, the winds changed for the worst.  I went to wash my dishes, a fair attempt to clean up before my flatmate comes home, when all of a sudden the water was not only not draining, but actually coming up the other side of the sink.  Uh oh.  Now as most of you know I have never lived by myself and have therefore never encountered a problem of such magnitude!  At this point, I was very panicky: the water was not going down, was coming up through the other side and showed no sign of draining at all.  I of course had no plunger and no way of procuring one quickly.  The only option left was to attempt to take apart, what appeared to me to be a super complicated sink system with no plumbing knowledge whatsoever.

Let me just say, pipes under a sink hold a significant amount of water in them, even when the sink is not running!  I did my very best to be prepared to receive all of it but man that water comes quickly and very sneakily.  Anyway to make a long and boring (yet victorious) story short, after taking every single pipe apart and cleaning out the disgusting amount of gunk and build up, I successfully reassembled it (twice) and the sink now drains superbly!  Feel free to be impressed with my incredible skills in both plumbing and endurance.  There were no tears of panic or frustration!

And now for the promised reward!  I finally have some group pictures from Cudillero to share with you :)

Our group: Lindsey, Me, Shani, and Aubrey at a cafe in Cudillero

Our feet in the middle of a big star

Shani and I at the top of the tower (the highest point in Cudillero, remember the other picture?)

Lindsey, Aubrey, Shani, and Me at our picnic lunch spot overlooking the harbor.

On the generosity of people.

I am still waiting on some group shots from Cudillero, but in the meantime, I thought I would share some of the amazing stories of generosity that we had encountered on our trip.  These may seem like small acts of kindness, but at the time I was touched by how complete strangers looked out for us.

Firstly, when we arrived at Cudillero, we had no idea where we were going.  Randomly, we found the tourist center and asked the woman at the desk for some help.  Not only did she hand us the map, but she highlighted the best places for us to see (such as the highest point, where we had our picnic).  She was super friendly and not dismissive, and when we didn't understand her spanish, she slowed down and repeated.

So maps in hand we confidently continued on to the highest point...until we realized we had no idea where we were going.  We chose a nice looking older gentleman to inquire about the highest point with the best view of everything, and he kindly took the time to explain that we needed to follow the blue railings etc.  That alone was just friendly, but later on our way back to the train station, he apparently saw us walking up a hill and came out of the restaurant he was eating in, to check in with us and make sure we had found it!  He did not need to do that, and many people would have let it go (we Americans are stupid as it is!) but he was just so sweet to check up on us.

On the whole trip we had some trouble with transportation.  We needed to transfer trains in the middle, but we didn't realize it until right before etc. But on the way back we knew we were going to have to sit in the train station in Pravia (a little teensy town) for about 2 hours before getting on the train to take us to Oviedo.  That is one of the hazards of having cheap transportations, but we were willing to sacrifice time to save money.  However, when we boarded the train in Cudillero, the conductor was worried that we would be sitting so long in the station so he informed us of an alternate route (we could take the same train to a neighboring city and then transfer there).  Not only did he not charge us for the change in route, but he apparently let the conductor who got on after him know about us as well.  When we got off the train, we were very lost about which one to transfer to and the conductor came running over and asked if we were the girls going to Gijon (We were) and pointed us to the right train.

Again, these are simple acts of follow through, but they are always appreciated.  I am not sure if these were isolated incidents, but from everything I have seen from the people of Spain they are willing to bend over backwards to be accommodating for you.  Spain is the place to be guys!  Come visit!

p.s. I do not know if you can see, but up in the left hand corner there is a grey tower with black spiral staircase?  That is the highest point that we climbed up to.

A Cudillero Saturday

As I said yesterday I was taking a day trip to the little village of Cudillero.  I had no idea at all what my friends and I were getting into, but we hopped on a train and went for it!  The town was about a thirty minute walk to get to the center of town but once we did, it was worth it.  I believe the pictures will speak for themselves, yet even they can not elaborate on the beauty that enveloped the entire town.  We were lucky enough to not have it rain, but the cold misty weather was very reminiscent of a rainy day in Brewster Park.

At first we wandered around randomly until we ran into the tourist building (completely by accident) and asked for a map.  We then discovered the best place to see everything: the tallest point in the city.  I don't know if you can tell from these snapshots, but the village is perched on an almost vertically steep mountain.  For those of you who do not know me that well...let's just say kindly that I do not climb up mountains a lot.  But somehow, I dragged my sorry sad butt up all the way to the top anyway.  And man, was it worth the effort!  You could see the whole village, the beautiful ocean, just everything.

I am going to let the pictures show you the adventure for today, but tomorrow more stories will ensue!

Enjoy!

First views of the village.

But then we actually saw it! Wow!

Is that an ocean I see?

Yes!!

Yes!!!

More people shots tomorrow...but for now just me!

Trekking up the steep steep steps.

Finally made it to the top! So worth it!

The whole port.

We stopped and had a picnic here...what a view.

Goodbye Curdillero.  We enjoyed you greatly!

My future home in Cudillero.  Mark my words, I will be retiring here!